


After The War

by mountain_born



Series: The Marvelous Tale of an Agent, an Archer, and an Assassin [37]
Category: Doctor Who (2005), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Doctor Who/Avengers Crossover Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 18:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7812934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountain_born/pseuds/mountain_born
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is trying to move forward.    But sometimes to move forward, you have to revisit the past.  A side-trip to Toronto helps Captain America lay some of his doubts to rest and lets him learn a little about how SHIELD got started and the people who founded it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After The War

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and kudos, as always, to my amazing beta, **like-a-raven.** Much like the original character, Valerie Custis, the character of Meg Downing is much more her creation than mine, and she worked hard to keep me from going astray with her voice in this fic. 
> 
> A brief disclaimer: When I sat down in 2012 to design the _Marvelous Tale_ ‘verse, one of the things I did was to hash out the origins of SHIELD, how it was founded and by whom. Obviously a lot of Marvel canon has happened since then, making this version (like most of this series) extremely AU. Still, I wanted to tell a bit of the story of these Founders, what they were like and what motivated them. I hope you enjoy reading a bit about them.

_Birch Grove Retirement Home_   
_Toronto, Ontario_   
_May 2012_

He should have called ahead. 

Steve’s mother had been a stickler for good manners. Sarah Rogers hadn’t been able to give her son much, but like many a respectable Brooklyn mother, she’d always emphasized the importance of brains and courtesy. Being smart and well-mannered could open a lot of doors for a kid with otherwise limited opportunities. 

Steve had been smart enough, but he was also self-aware enough to know that he was no genius. He’d done just fine in school, but he hadn’t had brains like Howard Stark. Good manners had come to him easily enough, though.

So he probably should have called Meg Downing and given her a head’s up that he’d be coming.

Steve stood in the curved drive where the taxi had deposited him, looking up at Birch Grove Retirement Home. Unlike the nursing home where Peggy lived, this place seemed to be more along the lines of a fancy apartment building than a hospital. The people who lived here were still fairly independent. Their minds and bodies hadn’t started to fall apart too badly yet.

_It’s not fair._ Steve couldn’t quite keep the childish thought at bay. Peggy and Meg Downing were almost exactly the same age. Why should Meg still have a sound mind and body while Peggy had neither?

Steve still felt scraped raw by his visit with Peggy. His subsequent talk with the Doctor had been like an application of iodine. It cleaned the wound and would keep it from festering, no doubt, but it stung mercilessly. The Doctor had told Steve that the only way he had to go now was forward. All right then. He’d go forward. But Steve felt like he was stranded in the woods on a starless night with a busted compass. He couldn’t see the best way forward. He knew that Fury and most everyone else thought that that path was SHIELD and the Avengers. Steve wasn’t so sure.

Whether he wanted to admit it or not, he’d come here to find a direction. Steve shouldered his duffle bag and headed inside.

Steve drew some stares as he crossed the lobby, heading for the elevators. He mentally pegged the receptionist a SHIELD agent. Steve knew from Meg Downing and from Antoine Triplett that there was always a small contingent of agents working at Birch Grove, protecting the former director. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if the building’s video surveillance had facial recognition software, scanning anyone who came through the doors. That was why he didn’t feel too bad about turning up here unannounced. Steve was sure that by the time he rode the elevator to the top floor and reached the door of Apartment 1212, Meg had been tipped off to his arrival.

Whether that hunch was right, or Meg was just being her unflappable self, she didn’t look even slightly surprised when she answered the door.

“Captain. It’s good to see you. Won’t you come in?” she said, as if there was nothing at all strange about him showing up unannounced on her doorstep.

“Thanks.” 

Steve followed Meg into her living room. He couldn’t help but look around curiously. The room was neat and tidy, and a bit old-fashioned and formal, much like Meg Downing herself. The shelves along the far wall were filled with neat rows of books. There was no extraneous bric-a-brac, but there were some pretty prints on the walls and a beautiful silver menorah and set of candlesticks on the mantelpiece. There were two photos in silver frames on a side table, the only photos on display in the entire room. They were both old, in black-and-white. Steve’s eyes were immediately drawn to the smaller of the two as he recognized Howard Stark. 

Howard was standing between Meg and a tall, fair young man who bore a strong resemblance to her. This must be her brother, Jamie, who had died during the war. All three of them were beaming, posing in front of a sign for the 1939 World’s Fair. Like any good boy from Brooklyn, Steve knew his New York folklore. The 1939 World’s Fair was where Howard Stark had become THE Howard Stark. And Steve knew, straight from THE Howard Stark himself, that Meg and Jamie Downing had been instrumental in helping him get there. They must have decided to commemorate the occasion.

Steve’s eyes lingered on the Meg in the photo. She looked strange, and it took him a moment to put his finger on why. It wasn’t that she was younger. (Steve remembered Meg very well from his life before the ice.) It was the fact that she looked purely happy. She looked unguarded and carefree. Steve had never seen her look like that.

The second photo was a posed studio portrait of Meg and Jamie. This was the Meg that Steve remembered from London. She was smiling. She was clearly happy, but it was a tempered sort of happiness. Her gaze was direct and had a new weight to it, in sharp contrast to her body which was noticeably too thin.

“That was taken in 1942, not long after I escaped from France,” Meg said. She stepped up beside Steve, picking up the portrait. “Jamie’s ship came into port, and Howard pulled some strings to get him to London for a week. It was the first time I’d seen him in two years. Jamie insisted that we get our picture taken. I didn’t want to. I thought I looked terrible, but he insisted. I’m glad he did. This is the last picture of the two of us together.”

Meg’s brother had died of pneumonia not long after Steve had met her. These days, Jamie Downing would probably be dosed with penicillin and be perfectly fine in a week. Steve glanced aside at Meg. “I’m sorry.”

Even though the pictures were on public display, he felt like he had been prying.

Meg just shook her head, setting the picture down. “Coffee?” she asked. “Or if you’d prefer something stronger, I have whiskey.”

Steve blinked. “It’s eleven o’clock on the morning.”

“And you’re physically incapable of getting drunk.” Meg looked amused. “The only one of the Howling Commandoes I could never drink under the table. I knew better than to try.”

“Six out of seven wasn’t bad,” Steve replied. “Even if you cheated.”

He knew that Meg could hold her liquor, but she was a tiny woman so she could only hold so much of it. It had embarrassed Steve that it had taken him so long to cotton on to the fact that she out-drank the Commandos thanks to some clever slight of hand.

“Two years behind enemy lines, socializing with German officers. Remaining sober was a survival skill, not to mention a handy way to get information,” Meg replied. “Did Bucky tell you?”

“Yeah,” Steve admitted. “He did.”

Meg nodded, looking unsurprised. “He figured it out pretty quickly, but he promised not to give me away. He enjoyed watching me confound the others too much.”

Steve made a noncommittal noise. He knew that Meg and Bucky had had a bit of a fling back during the war, during the time the Commandos were in London. They’d gone dancing a lot. Steve was also reasonably sure that they’d _gone dancing_ at least once, but that hadn’t been any of his business and he’d never asked. Meg and Bucky had had some demons in common between her time trapped in occupied France and his stint in that Hydra POW camp. If they’d helped each other work through some of them while having a little fun along the way, where was the harm in that?

At Meg’s invitation, Steve sat down on the sofa, stowing his duffle beside it. Meg took the armchair. It didn’t escape Steve’s notice that she sat with her back facing a wall and with the door to the apartment in her line of sight.

“So, Steve, what can I do for you?” she asked. “I highly doubt that you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“I was in London,” Steve replied. “I went to see Peggy.”

“And how did you find her?”

“Different,” Steve said after a long moment. “Still Peggy, though. We had a good talk. She got a little confused in places, but her son said it was a good day for her, all things considered.”

“She does have her good days and bad days,” Meg said with a nod. “I’m glad she had a good one while you were there. I had worried a little about how she’d react to seeing you. Peggy has a tendency to get the past and the present confused. Last week, she and I had a lengthy phone conversation about how to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was in 1962,” Meg added after a moment.

“Kennedy Administration.” Steve was still catching up on the historical events he’d missed, but he’d hit that one. “The world almost ended. Again.”

“It happens more often than most people realize,” Meg said with a wry smile. “And it isn’t usually so public as an armed nuclear standoff or aliens pouring out of a portal over a major city. SHIELD has headed off any number of disasters, or near-disasters, that most of the world never even knew about. Hope used to keep a scoreboard in her office. She always said that she was a visually motivated person.”

“ _Hope._ I’ve seen her name on SHIELD’s Founder’s Wall,” Steve said. “And _Aegis._ SHIELD’s mystery founders.” After sixty years, still known only by their code names. “Who were they?”

“They were very good, very intelligent people with amazing determination and foresight. They were my friends,” Meg replied. She smiled. “But if it’s names you’re after, forgive me, Steve, but there’s no one on this Earth I’d answer that question for. Their identities are classified for a reason, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”

Meg’s tone was polite, even pleasant, but there were cords of steel running through it. Because, of course, Meg _wasn’t_ the girl in those black-and-white photos anymore. She had run SHIELD for years. She must be used to her word being more or less law.

“SHIELD and its secrets.” Steve folded his arms, leaning tiredly back against the sofa. Super-soldier he might be, but he was coming off a stressful day, a sleepless night, and a transatlantic flight, and he was starting to feel it. “What a surprise.”

“SHIELD is a covert intelligence agency. Of course it has its secrets,” Meg said. “It would be doing a very poor job if it didn’t.”

“I guess I’m just more of a _march through the front door_ sort of person,” Steve admitted. Really, just look at his uniform. “I’m not saying that the way SHIELD does things is wrong. I just don’t know if it’s my way.”

“Does it need to be?”

“Once I get back to New York, Fury’s expecting me to sign on with the Avengers.” Not just as a one-time cooperative effort in the face of a cataclysm, but as a standing team. “Actually, I’m pretty sure he thinks I’ve already officially signed on. That means I’m working for SHIELD. It’s not like the Army. I knew what that stood for. I’m not sure I know what SHIELD stands for.”

And that gave Steve pause. When an organization kept so many secrets, how could he really know who or what he was fighting for? He’d seen a lot of good in SHIELD, true. But Steve knew that an organization like that was bound to have a dark side.

“SHIELD stands for protecting people when no one else can or is willing to. But you know that if you’ve read the mission statement, and I suspect you have, so that’s not really what you’re asking, is it?” Meg sat forward, folded hands resting on her knee. “The world changed, you know, after the war. Whatever else you can say about the Nazis, one thing they were good for was giving everyone a common, uncomplicated enemy.

“After that, though, war became a more shadowy creature, one where the different sides weren’t necessarily defined by flags and nations. There was a feeling, among those of us who founded SHIELD and who got involved in the early days, that perhaps what the world needed was some sort of organization that was able and willing to keep the peace, but that wasn’t tied to any one government. A neutral party, if you like, but one with teeth. That’s why we’ve always recruited from wherever we found someone worth recruiting. CIA, MI-5, KGB, Mossad, DGSI, GID, MSS, UNIT, Torchwood; I’ve stolen some of the best from them all. I’ve also recruited from the New York Public Library, one of Howard’s film lots, and a pretzel stand in Central Park.”

“And from the circus and the freelance assassin market,” Steve added.

Steve had had a chance to review files on Agent Barton and Agent Song. They’d probably been heavily abridged, but they were still an interesting read. Steve shook his head. “Working with spies and assassins. That’ll take some getting used to.”

“You worked easily enough with Bucky and he was a sniper, which is exactly what Agent Barton is. As for Agent Song, she came to us with a, shall we say, unique history. Her life hasn’t been an easy one. Neither has Barton’s. SHIELD offered them a place where they could use their skills for good. They not only accepted those offers, they surpassed everyone’s expectations.”

“I didn’t mean it as an insult, Meg.” 

Meg arched an eyebrow at him and sat back in her chair a bit.

“Assassination, much as people might revile it, has its place,” she said. “SHEILD has accepted that from the very beginning. Let me remind you, I personally poisoned eight high-ranking Nazi officers during the war, men who I’d invited into my home as guests at a party.” She smiled, and there was something about it that struck Steve as being at once fondly nostalgic and faintly dangerous. “And Julien was the one who supplied the arsenic.”

Steve opted to skirt around any comment about morality. 

“Julien Vasseur?” he said instead. Steve knew that name from the Founder’s Wall, too. “He was French Resistance, right? You met him during the war?”

Steve knew Meg’s story, had known it well before he went into the ice. Howard had filled him in. Meg’s experience in the war had been somewhat unique (though, in many ways, all too common). Like many Jewish families in North America, the Downings had had relatives back in Europe who had been in increasing danger as German forces rolled across the continent. In 1940, Meg had been sent over by her parents to collect an elderly aunt who had made it out of Vienna and as far as Paris. As bad timing would have it, the aunt had died within a day of Meg’s arrival.

Then France had fallen. 

Meg had been able to make it out of Paris, but she hadn’t been able to get out of France before the borders closed. She’d been twenty years old and alone, stranded in occupied territory. She’d had small stockpile of cash, the ability to speak French like a native, and a resourceful streak. She’d set herself up with fake documents as a young Frenchwoman, and settled in to wait out the occupation. She’d spent two years in France doing what she’d needed to do to survive, including becoming the mistress of a Nazi officer. She’d also taken some incredible risks, like getting involved with the French Resistance.

As Steve watched, Meg rose from her chair and went to her bookcase, plucking a volume from the shelf. She carried it back over, and Steve could see the title: _Les Trios Mousquetaires._ Meg flipped to a point in the middle of the book and pulled out a photograph, handing it to Steve.

“Julien Vasseur,” she said with a smile. “French Resistance. Founder of SHIELD. He’d been a baker by trade before the war; he made the best croissants I’ve ever tasted. And the day we met he pinned me to a wall by my throat and threatened to kill me.”

Steve studied the picture. It was a profile shot of a rail-thin man with a shock of thick, dark hair. He was sitting on a city balcony smoking a cigarette. 

“Sounds like it was a hell of an introduction,” Steve said, handing the photo back. “He thought you were a collaborator?”

“Well, I _was_ a Nazi colonel’s mistress,” Meg said. “And unbeknownst to me at the time, one of my neighbors was Resistance, and he’d gone missing. Julien thought someone had informed on him and decided I was the most likely candidate. Have you ever tried to talk your way out of being killed while being held to a wall by your throat?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Steve said. “But I guess you must have persuaded him.”

“Yes. Though to this day I couldn’t tell you what I said that convinced Julien to spare me and that I could be trusted to help the Resistance. He never would tell me, either. He’d only ever say, _Are you sorry, Georgette, that I did?”_ Steve’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Meg added, “ _Georgette_ was the name I was using in France. Julien called me that until the day he died.”

“So you worked with the Resistance until your. . .escape,” Steve said.

“ _Escape._ That’s one word for it.” Meg glanced up from the photograph. “Exactly how much did Howard tell you about that?”

“I think everything he knew,” Steve said. It hadn’t been much. Details on how Meg got out of France in 1942 had been thin. “He said that you’d poisoned the Nazi colonel and his friends—and yourself. You were going to go down with the ship for the greater good. Then later that same day you appeared unconscious in an Army hospital in Sussex and no one ever knew how you got there, yourself included.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Did you ever figure out what happened? Did you ever find out anything after the war?” Steve asked. 

He had to think that a bizarre and unanswered question of that magnitude must have driven a person like Meg Downing crazy. 

But she looked completely unconcerned. “No,” she said. “It did bother me for a time, the not knowing. But we live in a strange world, and some questions don’t get answered. I decided to just be grateful to be alive.”

Steve wasn’t entirely sure he bought that, but maybe acceptance of the impossible had just wound up being easier for Meg than continued questions. Howard had said that Meg had had no memory at all of how she’d gotten from Occupied France to England in the course of a day, and into a hospital with no one seeing how. She’d only remembered one thing: _A Scottish doctor with eyebrows._

Steve frowned, feeling his brain make an abrupt left turn. Maybe it was because of his surreal talk with the Doctor in the wee small hours of that morning. Maybe it was the way he’d heard people talk about the alien: _The Time Lord. All of Time and Space._

Was it possible? If anyone could have pulled off Meg’s escape—or rescue—from France, it was the Doctor. Only the Doctor wasn’t Scottish. Okay, he wasn’t _English_ either. (He wasn’t human at all.) But he sure as hell didn’t sound Scottish, and there was nothing remarkable at all about his eyebrows.

“Steve?”

Steve looked up to find Meg giving him a searching look. 

“Sorry,” he said. “I zoned out.”

“You’ve had a long few days,” Meg said. “And you probably need lunch. I remember how that remarkable metabolism of yours works.”

“Maybe,” Steve said. He’d long ago given up being slightly embarrassed about how much food his body burned through on an average day. “There was food on the plane. But. . .”

“It bears little resemblance to food most of the time. I understand.” Meg collected her cane and stood. “I’m afraid I don’t keep anything more complicated than cheese and crackers on hand, and even if I did I like you too much to ever subject you to my cooking. The dining room here is quite good, though, if you don’t mind running the gauntlet of matchmaking grandmothers.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ve faced worse.” Steve rose as well, and he couldn’t help a slightly teasing smile. “So, something Director Downing isn’t good at, huh?”

“Steve, my dear, it goes beyond _not good at_ ,” Meg replied. “Honestly, I should have tried to cook more in France. I probably could have had the German army on its knees in under a week. No, if you want little-known insight into the Founders, Julien was by far and away the best cook. Aegis was solidly competent to quite good depending on the dish. Hope could manage a nice array of the basics. Even Howard occasionally produced something edible. And then there was me.” She threaded her arm through Steve’s and guided him toward the door. “Come on. I have a feeling we have a lot of talking still to do. We should do it on full stomachs.”

*****

After lunch, Steve and Meg went outside for a walk. Birch Grove was in a suburban area, and though its grounds weren’t extensive, it had a nice lawn criss-crossed by flat walking paths and dotted with flower beds, benches and garden tables. Steve concentrated on keeping his pace slow and his strides short to accommodate Meg and her cane.

“Did Howard really die in a car accident?” he asked after they’d strolled in silence for several minutes. 

Meg looked a little surprised. “Such a strange question.”

Steve smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I guess that kind of was,” he said. “I just have a hard time envisioning Howard going out that way.”

This was a man who had flown a civilian aircraft into enemy airspace and conducted risky underground scientific experiments for the SSR. A car accident just seemed so mundane.

“I know what you mean,” Meg replied. “In retrospect, it would have been more in keeping with Howard for him to have gone out in a blaze of glory in a spectacular laboratory accident. But it was just an accident. He and Maria were driving from their house on Long Island to the airport. Somehow he lost control of the car.”

“Were you around for that?”

“I’m the one who went with Anthony to identify the bodies,” Meg said. “It was a difficult night, to say the least.”

“I’m sorry.” Steve felt like he was saying that a lot today.

“Thank you.” They had come to a fork in the path. Meg turned to the right, leading them down a stretch that was shaded by large maple trees. “You know, you woke up to learn that almost all of your old friends were dead. I was here to watch them die. I’m not sure which of us got the sadder lot.”

“Neither am I,” Steve replied. 

That was one competition where no one came out the winner.

“It was different in the war, somehow,” Meg said. “It wasn’t easy—all those boys, so young. But you almost expected it and everyone was experiencing it together. When Jamie died, or Bucky, there was the shock of losing the individual, but not of the fact of their deaths. Later it was. . .when Julien died in 1976, it was such a surprise. No one that close to me had died for years, and he wasn’t so old that you really expected it.”

“What happened to him?”

“The war. It just took thirty years. Julien was captured by the Germans in 1944. He spent nearly a year in Buchenwald before it was liberated. His health never really recovered, not completely. On top of that he smoked too much and didn’t eat or sleep enough, and he had days when he’d get. . .we’d always just say _stressed._ Now they’d diagnose PTSD. He always did better when he had work to focus on. SHIELD saved his life in a lot of ways. Or, at least, it put his death off by a good number of years.”

Steve had missed the liberation of the German prisoner and death camps, but he’d done extensive reading. He knew the name _Buchenwald_ well.

“How did you even find him again?”

“With Howard’s help,” Meg said. “After the war we both went searching for what we’d lost. He looked for you, I looked for Julien. Howard used his pull to get information for me.” She laughed. “He grumbled about that later on. Howard and Julien didn’t get along most of the time. They knew _exactly_ how to get under each other’s skin. Of course, if anyone else meddled with one of them, they’d have the wrath of the other to deal with. They fought like a cat and dog, but they’d close ranks when it mattered.”

Steve listened quietly, a little surprised to hear Meg speaking so openly. It occurred to Steve that Meg was kind of in the same boat he was. She probably didn’t have a lot of people she could talk over “the old days” with.

“To be fair, there were occasionally times when I wanted to strangle Julien myself,” Meg went on. “Like the day he brought home a stray cat which, of course, immediately attached itself to me. Or when he’d ‘forget’ and cook bacon in my kitchen. I threatened to banish him back to his own apartment on those days.”

“He lived with you? So, you two were. . .involved?” Steve asked curiously.

“Oh, no. Nothing like that,” Meg said. She smiled sidelong at Steve. “You would have been far more Julien’s type.”

Steve was a little embarrassed that it took him a moment to work out Meg’s meaning, but then he was still getting used to homosexuality being a thing people discussed openly.

“Right,” he said. “That couldn’t have made his life any easier.”

“No, I’m sad to say it didn’t,” Meg replied. “Howard and I and the rest of the early leaders all knew, of course. But outside of our circle. . .well, at the time that knowledge could have been a very compromising pressure point. We kept it quiet, and since Julien legally had a wife back in France no one in the lower ranks of SHIELD really thought to question it.”

“A wife?”

“Camille,” Meg said with a nod. “Julien married her before the war. She was a local girl who’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Her father and Julien’s father were friends and they arranged it. It protected them both and Julien adored Nicole, his daughter. I think the worst blow the war dealt him was losing her.”

“She died?” Steve asked.

“No. Camille and Nicole survived the war, but the old Julien didn’t. He didn’t want Nicole to see him that way. He wanted her to remember the papa who used to carry her on his back and get down in the floor and play with her. 

“Camille blamed me. I was still the woman her husband left her for, but no, Julien and I weren’t involved. He was my best friend and I loved him, that’s all.” 

Meg paused and looked at her watch. She still wore a 40’s style wristwatch, Steve noted, and a pretty fancy one at that.

“I hate to cut our walk short, but my doctor is coming by shortly. This won’t take long. We’ll continue our conversation afterward.” Meg turned, heading back toward the building. “Shall we, Captain?”

*****

As it turned out, SHIELD had a major medical hub in Toronto. Its specialty was long-term physical rehabilitation, but its practice extended to other areas as well, including routine medical check-ups. Meg Downing, as the former director of SHIELD, not only rated her own personal physician, but a personal physician who made weekly house calls.

Steve rose from his chair as Meg escorted a young black woman carrying a doctor’s bag into the living room. She looked only mildly surprised to find a strange man in her patient’s apartment.

“I’m sorry, Director. I didn’t know you had a meeting today,” she said. Judging by her accent, SHIELD had recruited this doctor straight from London. “I can reschedule.”

“That’s not necessary,” Meg said. “This is just a friendly visit. Dr. Jones, this is Steve Rogers. Steve, this is Dr. Martha Jones. SHIELD stole her from UNIT, much to their annoyance. She’s the one who gets to keep me in good working order.”

“Nice to meet you,” Steve said, shaking Dr. Jones’ hand. 

“Mr. Rogers. Or should I say ‘Captain?’” Dr. Jones replied with a smile. “Brilliant job in New York.”

“Thanks.”

Steve was dispatched to the kitchen to make coffee while Meg conferred with her doctor. He wasn’t sure what kind of physical could be conducted in a person’s living room, but from what he observed, Dr. Jones just checked Meg’s pulse and blood pressure, shone a light into her eyes, and asked a series of questions about her well-being. The exam was finished by the time the coffee was ready. Steve sat a little awkwardly in an armchair with his cup of coffee while the two women chatted with an air of, if not friendship, then of long-standing, comfortable acquaintance. Dr. Jones only stayed for one cup; the whole visit lasted half an hour.

Steve must have looked a little puzzled because, once Meg had shown Dr. Jones out, she looked at him with a faint smile.

“The main physical work-up is only once a month,” she explained. “These weekly house calls are mostly to let Martha assess my mental state. She makes sure I’m not slipping.”

“Making sure you’re still of sound mind,” Steve said, thinking of Peggy.

Meg nodded. “I’m a very old woman with a head full of classified and sensitive intelligence. That makes me a potential liability.”

She sounded perfectly matter-of-fact. Steve frowned.

“So what happens if you start to slip?” he asked. 

“SHIELD has protocols for dealing with me.”

“Jesus, Meg!”

It came out a little more forcefully than Steve intended. Meg looked slightly taken aback.

“Well, there’s no need for shock. Most of the protocols don’t call for my death. Besides, I’m the one who wrote them in the first place. I put my whole life into SHIELD, Steve. I won’t put it at risk now.”

“ _Most_ of them don’t call for your death. Well, that’s reassuring.” Steve’s eyes narrowed. “Is there a protocol like this on Peggy?”

Peggy had been the head of the SHIELD office in London, overseeing operations in most of Europe. That meant that she would have been privy to a lot of classified intelligence, and she clearly wasn’t as mentally steady as she’d once been.

“Yes, and that protocol is already in effect,” Meg said. “Peggy’s nursing home is operated by SHIELD. The organization runs a few of them, as a matter of fact. Security and access are tightly controlled, and all of the employees are vetted. If my mind starts to falter before my body does, I’ll likely wind up in one, too.”

“SHIELD has its own nursing homes. _Of course_ it does.”

Meg raised an eyebrow. “SHIELD has always believed in taking care of its own. Are you saying you disapprove?”

“No. Of course not,” Steve replied. He sighed heavily. The hostility had been a knee-jerk response to the spike of concern for Peggy. He made an effort to lighten his tone. “But at this point if you told me that SHIELD produced its own Broadway shows and ran a chain of ice cream parlors, I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny either of those examples,” Meg said.

Steve managed to hold onto his glare until he saw the corners of Meg’s mouth turn up. The laugh escaped before he could stop it.

“SHIELD the Musical.” _Just what the world needed._ Steve shook his head and looked down at his empty cup. “I think I need more coffee.”

Meg handed him her cup. “Just cream for me, please.”

*****

“Do you know the Doctor?” Steve asked.

He had resumed his spot on the sofa, and Meg had produced a box of cookies to go with their coffee. They’d hit a lull in their conversation, and Steve’s head had fallen tiredly against the sofa’s back.

“I assume you’re not referring to Martha,” Meg replied.

"No. Barton, Song, and Coulson's friend, the alien. The time traveler.”

If Meg _didn’t_ know something about the Time Lord, Steve would eat his shield. Whether she’d confirm or deny that remained to be seen. 

“I’m not sure I can claim to know him,” Meg said. “SHIELD had some intelligence on him, of course. The Doctor isn’t shy about being noticed, and he has a habit of turning up in unorthodox places. I only met him for the first time a little over three years ago, though. He and his companions, Amelia and Rory, paid a visit to SHIELD Headquarters.”

“SHIELD Headquarters? Fury must have had kittens.”

“Nicolas knows how to roll with the punches far better than that,” Meg said. “And in any event, he wasn’t there. He was actually sitting right where you are now. Agents Coulson, Barton, and Song dealt with the Doctor.”

“What happened?”

“In a nutshell? The Doctor helped avert what could have been a disaster. He saved the lives of SHIELD personnel and made some friends along the way.” Meg gave him a searching look over the rim of her coffee cup. “What’s your interest in the Doctor?”

Steve shrugged his shoulders a little uncomfortably. “He came to see me in London last night. He just. . .showed up.”

Silence stretched out for several beats before Meg replied. “And?”

"We talked."

“Ah. I see.” Meg set her cup down. “You asked him to take you back.”

Steve really hated being a foregone conclusion. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it’s what I would ask him for,” Meg said candidly. Her eyes strayed to the pictures on the side table. “We all have things in our past we’d like to change. If the Doctor were to cross my path, I’d ask him to take me back and help me save my brother. I’d do it without thinking twice.”

Steve didn’t doubt that she would. He’d seen Meg on the day she’d received word that her brother had died.

“You wouldn’t ask him to stop you from going to France?” he asked.

“Now, you see, that’s trickier.” Meg helped herself to another cookie. “Would I stop myself from going to France, knowing what was coming? It would have spared me from two hellish years, that’s for sure. But then I never would have met Julien. I never would have discovered exactly what I was capable of—spying, sabotage, even killing. I would never have been involved with SHIELD. My whole life would have been different.”

Meg took a bite of her cookie, looking contemplative. “It occurred to me once that if I hadn’t gone to France, if I’d spent the war safe and sound in Canada, I probably would have married Howard. I know he would have looked me up at the end of the war; I’m sure Jamie made him promise to take care of me if anything happened to him. We would have been re-meeting after a separation of six years, but with a past history and a lot of affection. And Howard was a lovely man. I’d have to have been blind not to notice that. So who knows?”

Steve paused with a cookie halfway to his mouth. His brain automatically tried to envision Meg Downing mothering Tony Stark. It looked like his imagination had limits.

“But instead,” Meg continued, “Howard was the one who picked up the pieces after France, and after Jamie died, and everything else. So by V-E Day, we were quite firmly and happily settled into a brother-and-sister relationship, and we stayed that way for the rest of our lives. That was probably for the best.”

“Why didn’t you ever get married?” Steve asked. “If you don’t mind my asking. Was it because of the job?”

“Mostly.” Meg glanced down at her watch. Steve wondered if she was expecting another appointment. “I’m sure there were a few enlightened men floating around in the 1950s who wouldn’t have minded a wife with a full-time career in international espionage. Peggy and her husband made things work. But I didn’t have the time or patience to go looking for one. I didn’t even really have the desire to. I had SHIELD and Julien, and that cat of his. I’m not going to claim that I lived like a nun, but marriage was never a priority for me.”

“I guess a life built on working for a good cause isn’t such a bad thing,” Steve said. 

He thought the remark was fairly neutral, but Meg gave him a sharp, knowing look.

“No, it’s not a bad thing at all,” she replied. “But that doesn’t mean that you need to resign yourself to spending your life alone, Steve.”

“I didn’t say anything like that.”

“No, but you were thinking it.” Meg folded her hands on her knee, leaning forward. “You were thinking that if SHIELD was a substitute for marriage and a family for me, the Avengers could be the same thing for you. That you could just bury yourself in the work and not worry about the rest of it.”

Steve glared at her, but didn’t bother to deny it. “I’m starting to see why you were so good at your job.”

“Thank you.” Meg leaned back in her chair again, her expression softening a bit. “Don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand. If you, at some point, want your life to involve a wife and children, there’s no reason why it can’t. You’re still young. Yes, I know that technically you’re older than I am, but sleeping through time isn’t the same as living through it. You’re young and you have a lot of life ahead of you. Don’t just make up your mind that you have to be alone.”

The words, kind as they were, caused a pang of pain. Steve looked down at his coffee cup, his mind straying back to Peggy. Not the Peggy he had just visited, but the Peggy he’d known before.

“I just can’t even think about that right now,” he said. 

“That’s all right. You don’t have to think about it right now. Just promise me that you’ll think about it later. After all--”

The cell phone sitting at Meg’s elbow on the end table buzzed and she picked it up, frowning a bit at the screen.

“Problem?” Steve asked.

“Oh, no,” Meg said. “But this could be time sensitive. Would you excuse me for a moment?”

Meg closed herself in one of the back rooms to take her call. Steve let his head fall back and closed his eyes. He was so tired that his brain was starting to feel slightly disconnected from his body. 

Meg would probably be a few minutes. He could allow himself forty winks.

*****

Steve’s forty winks accidentally turned into a multiple-hour nap.

When he woke up, he was stretched out on Meg’s sofa (as much as he could, given his height) without any memory of having moved into that position. There was a throw pillow under his head and his feet were propped up on the arm. Steve frowned at the toes of his socks. He had no memory of shedding his shoes, either. 

Meg was sitting in her armchair, in a shaft of late afternoon sunlight, working a crossword. She waved off Steve’s embarrassed apology.

“You’re hardly the first person to take an impromptu nap there,” she said. “At least you’re a quiet sleeper. Nicholas snores, quite loudly. Speaking of which,” she set aside her puzzle and stood, “I have something to show you that I think you’ll find interesting.”

She went to her bookshelves again. While her back was turned, Steve quickly ran an experimental hand through his hair to see how badly it was sticking up. He spotted his shoes sitting neatly under the coffee table. Meg must have taken them off, and he marveled slightly that she’d been able to do it without waking him up. He must have been more tired than he’d realized. 

Meg came back with a copy of _Treasure Island._ Her fingers turned unerringly to a page in the middle and she pulled out a photograph. Did she store _all_ of her photographs in her books? Steve eyed the expansive collection of hardbacks and paperbacks and wondered.

“Do you have something against albums?”

“Albums are too obvious. I have my own system.” Meg handed him the photo. “Nicholas J. Fury. This was back when he was still a field agent.”

The photo was in color and clearly more recent than the one of Julien Vasseur. It showed Nick Fury and Meg Downing sharing a table at what looked suspiciously like a Christmas party. 

“Huh. He looks really different with two eyes and hair.”

“Doesn’t he just?” Meg grinned. “The incident was unfortunate, of course, but I do think the eyepatch and scars have wound up being an advantage. I was an effective director of SHIELD because people, much to their eventual pain and regret, underestimated me. Nicholas is effective because he looks like he eats danger for breakfast.”

“Is that why you picked him to be your successor?”

“No.” Meg resumed her chair. “I decided to make Nicholas my second in command on the day he spent twenty minutes in my office arguing against a direct order I’d given him.”

Seemed a bit counter-intuitive to Steve. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d appreciate insubordination.”

“Insubordination, no,” Meg agreed. “But I do appreciate criticism. I’ve seen the handiwork of people who _just followed orders._ So have you. Nicholas proved that he wasn’t afraid to push back when he thought I was wrong. It’s the same reason he chose Maria as his second. The best SHIELD agents are the ones who can think for themselves and know when not to follow orders.”

“Did we just circle back around to the SHIELD sales pitch?” Steve asked with a wry smile.

“Only inadvertently,” she said. “It’s a fact worth knowing, though.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if Fury ever gives me a hard time for going off book. But don’t worry. I won’t reveal my source.”

“Oh, you won’t need to.” Meg took the photograph back and tucked it back into the book. “He’s good. He’ll know.”

*****

When dinner time rolled around, Meg suggested that they get out for a while.

“There’s a very good Chinese restaurant just down the road, if you don’t mind driving,” she said. “I don’t have a license anymore.”

“But you have a car?” Steve asked curiously as they prepared to head out.

“Oh, yes. I keep it garaged here,” Meg replied. “It’s sort of a sentimental thing.”

Meg’s car, which was berthed downstairs in an underground parking garage, was big, pale blue, and (in Steve’s mind) what a car was supposed to look like, though it would have been a little futuristic by 1940’s standards. 

“It’s a 1957 Bel Air. It was a gift from Howard,” Meg said as she buckled herself into the passenger seat. “He made some special modifications.”

“Yeah? What kind of modifications?” Steve was a little busy looking over the controls on the steering column and the dashboard. He’d gotten used to modern vehicles, and was a little surprised how delighted he was to see a manual transmission and a clutch.

“Flight capability.”

Steve turned to look at her. “Flight capability?”

“Oh, yes. It was a pet dream of Howard’s for years. You must remember. You said that you and Bucky went to the Stark Expo in 1943. Howard was so annoyed when that car crashed on stage. Of course, he hadn’t really had time to get it ready. The whole reason for the Expo was to cover up the fact that Howard was in New York working on Project Rebirth. He grumbled about it for _years,_ though.”

“Your car— _this_ car—flies,” Steve said.

“Yes, but I haven’t used that feature in ages. You really have to get out in the country away from prying eyes for that, but I’m sure it’s still quite capable of flying. Anthony comes up once a year and goes over it to make sure everything stays in good working order.”

Steve cast a wary look at the dashboard, half-expecting to see a button labeled “Launch” somewhere between the radio and the cigarette lighter. He wondered if Meg was pulling his leg. She was an old hand at telling convincing lies, after all. She might be joshing him.

On the other hand, she might not be.

One way or the other, flying wasn’t necessary this evening. The Chinese restaurant was less than half a mile away. Steve and Meg were settled in a booth with spring rolls in short order.

“I hear you found an apartment in Brooklyn,” Meg said.

“Yeah,” Steve said, adding a packet of sugar to his tea. “It’s not exactly the old neighborhood, but I have a hard time imagining living anywhere else. It’s small, but I don’t need a lot of room.”

“You didn’t want to live on base?”

“I think if I’m going to work for SHIELD, it’ll be better for me not to be living in the middle of it.”

Living on base would probably be more convenient, but Steve had quickly decided that it wasn’t for him. For one thing, as a member of the Avengers he might be working for SHIELD as an independent contractor (Fury’s words), but he wasn’t actually _joining_ SHIELD. Living at SHIELD HQ would send the wrong message. Steve also worried that he could lose perspective if he didn’t keep a little bit of distance. 

Besides, if he were a permanent resident of the SHIELD base, he’d never be off-duty. He’d always be Captain America. 

“It’s a bit of a commute, isn’t it?” Meg asked.

“A little over an hour if I take my motorcycle. About half that if I take the SHIELD line. Thank you, ma’am,” Steve said, moving his hands off the table as the waitress delivered his dinner and Meg’s. He waited until she’d gotten them squared away and moved off again before he added, “How exactly did SHIELD pull off building its own private, high-speed subway line without the public knowing about it?”

The SHIELD line had been part of Steve’s recent orientation tour of the headquarters. The two trains ran (every half hour, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year) from a station at SHIELD HQ to Grand Central Station and to SHIELD’s downtown office building in Manhattan.

“We had considerable political influence by the time we undertook that little project,” Meg said, draping her napkin in her lap. “That said, getting that line put in was a bear between keeping the construction under wraps and Howard constantly improving on the train design. We had to go deep to avoid the existing lines and to make it as secure as possible. It was worth it, though. It boosted employee morale by a good thirty percent.”

“It makes me think of those toilets the witches and wizards flush themselves down to get into the Ministry of Magic,” Steve said. He glanced up to see Meg looking at him with a highly amused expression and he felt himself blush. “It’s Trip’s fault. He gave me the first two books in that series before he left for his field assignment.”

“And the other five?”

“I bought those,” Steve said, busily arranging his napkin, cutlery, and water glass. “I know it’s silly. They’re kids’ books, but--”

“They’re an important popular culture touchpoint,” Meg interrupted. “I own them all, too. I feel that Dumbledore and I would have gotten along well. I also read them simply because I like them. There’s nothing wrong with doing something purely for enjoyment, Steve. In fact, you should do more things in that vein.”

“Are you saying I’m all work and no play?”

Meg smiled at him fondly. “You always were,” she said. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to ask yourself occasionally _what would Bucky do?”_

“I should go dancing?” Steve asked.

“Go dancing. Take an art class. Lead a scout troop. Hop on your motorcycle and go explore the country. Whatever it is you do, do it for fun and not because it’s a duty.”

“I was never very good at fun,” Steve admitted wryly, digging his fork into his dinner.

“I remember,” Meg said. “But you were always very good at applying yourself, so try to apply yourself to this.”

Steve smiled and shook his head. He could just imagine what Bucky would make of Meg’s advice.

“Bucky really liked you, you know,” he said. Steve rethought his remark the moment it left his mouth, and he glanced up guiltily, hoping he wasn’t giving Meg the wrong impression. “I don’t mean that he was carrying a big torch or anything. Just. . .he liked you.”

“And I liked him.” Meg seemed unperturbed. Steve had to remind himself that Bucky had been dead a lot longer from her perspective than he had from Steve’s. “I wasn’t the great love of his life and he wasn’t the great love of mine. We both knew that. Oh, but we had fun there for a while.”

That was Bucky, living life for all that it was worth. Steve had thought more than once that Bucky would have loved the twenty-first century and all it had to offer.

_“Where are we going,” Steve asked, wondering what setting Bucky had picked for their double date. Steve could have done without this particular rite of humiliation, but it was Bucky’s last night in New York before shipping out. Steve would go along with whatever he wanted._

_“The future,” Bucky replied, holding up a flyer for the Expo._

And look where that chain of events had led.

“Steve?”

Steve glanced up to see Meg holding up the small metal teapot with a questioning expression.

“Sorry.” Steve pushed his teacup over. “I was thinking.”

“No need to apologize for that,” Meg said. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten.”

*****

“So, SHIELD’s public relations office has been forwarding me a lot of messages from the Smithsonian,” Steve said.

They were back in Meg’s apartment, topping off their dinner with Scotch from Meg’s extremely well-stocked liquor cabinet. The effects of the alcohol might be lost on Steve, but the ritual of camaraderie was still relaxing.

“About the Howling Commandoes exhibit?” Meg had pulled an ottoman up to her armchair and sat with her feet up, ankles neatly crossed. Her glass was nestled comfortably in her hands. “That’s not exactly surprising.”

“Yeah. I kind of get the impression that I’ve screwed up their established historical narrative.”

Not that the Smithsonian representatives had put it that way. On the contrary, they sounded really enthusiastic over dusting off and upgrading the old Howling Commandoes exhibit. From talking to Trip, Steve gathered that the exhibit had been a big attraction up through the 1970s. Then interest had died off and it had been moved into storage and forgotten.

“Well, you did rise from an icy grave and helped to save the world from extraterrestrials,” Meg said. “I imagine there’s a plaque or two that will need to be edited.”

Steve snorted in amusement.

“They want to expand it, include my reappearance,” he said. “And they’re already planning a companion exhibit on the Battle of New York.”

“It’s this era’s Pearl Harbor,” Meg said, sipping her drink. “Only with even higher stakes.”

“Let’s hope full-on war doesn’t come right on its heels,” Steve replied. “The Avengers may have won the Battle, but I don’t think we’re ready for that yet.” He glanced up and caught Meg smiling at him. “What?”

“You just said _we._ ”

“Yeah. I did.”

“Well I, for one, feel like the world is in very good hands,” Meg said. She raised her glass. “To the Avengers.”

*****

Steve could have gone to a nearby hotel for the night, late as it was. Instead, he wound up bedded down on Meg Downing’s sofa. It was comfortable enough (if about three inches too short) and Meg had helped him make it up with sheets and blankets before she’d retired to her bedroom.

He lay awake for a long time, staring at the patterns of dim light on the ceiling. It made Steve think of the first night back in the U.S. Army camp in Italy, after liberating the Hydra prison facility. He knew that the popular fiction was that the whole camp had celebrated Captain America’s first victory and the return of the captured troops long into the night. In reality everyone, even those who weren’t sick or hurt, had crashed well before sunset. Steve had lain awake then too, looking at the ceiling of his tent and thinking about how much everything had changed.

The difference now was that Steve had come to the opposite conclusion: The world _hadn’t_ changed, not really. Not in the ways that mattered. For almost a year now, he had been so focused on the differences between the present and the past that he hadn’t given much thought to the similarities. Yeah, technology had advanced, national alliances had shifted all over the place, and popular culture had taken some weird turns. But the world was still here and people were still people, and he was still capable of serving both. As long as he had a purpose, he had a place here.

He was also the leader of a new team. It was probably time he started acting like it. Starting tomorrow. Steve rubbed his hand over his face, squirmed a little further down into the sofa cushions, and determinedly went to sleep.

The next morning after breakfast in the dining room (“You can’t travel on an empty stomach, Captain.”) Steve called for a taxi to take him to the train station.

“Thank you,” Steve said to Meg outside of Birch Grove’s front entrance. “For everything. I really appreciate it.”

“For feeding you and letting you sleep on my sofa?” Meg smiled. “That wasn’t much of a stretch for even my hostessing skills.”

“For talking over old times and helping me get my head on straight,” Steve replied, shouldering his duffle bag.

“Your head was already on straight,” Meg said. “And know that I’m always happy to talk over old times any time you want. There are so few of us left that we can’t afford to be stingy with our memories.” She held out her hand. “Good luck, Steve.”

Steve looked down at the hand for a moment then, more or less on impulse, leaned down and gave her a quick one-armed hug. When he straightened up again, Meg’s eyebrows and her mouth were both quirked in what he really hoped was amusement. 

“Thanks, Meg.”

Meg just shook her head in what was most definitely amusement, but all she said was, “Off with you or you’re going to miss your train.”

Steve didn’t discover his parting gift from Meg until the train had crossed the border. He reached into his duffle, which was riding in the seat beside him, to fish out his sunglasses when his hand encountered a strange object that definitely hadn’t been there before. Steve withdrew it curiously. It was a battered paperback copy of _A Tree Grows in Brooklyn._

Meg must have slipped it into his bag before he’d left. That was the only place it could have come from. Steve opened it, wondering if there was a message of any sort penned inside.

There wasn’t, at least not one set down in ink. Instead, just inside the title page, Steve found a black-and-white snapshot of him and Bucky. It was from London. Steve recognized the old pub that the Howling Commandoes had frequented.

Steve found more photographs as he flipped through the book. There were pictures of the Howling Commandoes, Peggy, and Howard. There were even one or two of Col. Phillips. Steve collected over three dozen in total from the pages of the book.

Meg Downing’s message was clear enough: _We can’t afford to be stingy with our memories._

Steve carefully tucked the pictures back in the book to keep them safe until he got home.

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: They Avengers are sent on their first mission, post-Battle of New York. Things don’t exactly go smoothly.


End file.
